Pune University to set up campus in Dubai

The University of Pune will be the first state university to fly out of the country and establish a fullfledged international campus. The Union HRD ministry has given its “in-principle’’ approval to the university to set up its campus in Dubai. Pune university vice-chancellor Narendra Jadhav confirmed that the Delhi nod came late last week. The permission, said sources, came after chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh took personal interest in the project and wrote to HRD minister Arjun Singh. While individual colleges like Mumbai’s S P Jain Institute of Management and BITS Pilani have ventured abroad, no state university has expanded its frontiers beyond the nation’s borders. The Dubai outpost is likely to be modelled along the lines of the 60-year-old Pune campus. It will offer 30 degree programmes and all the courses will be taught locally. Faculty members from Pune will be regularly flown to Dubai to conduct classes. Students who graduate from Dubai will get University of Pune degree certificates. While the Pune campus will continue to subsidise fees for its home students, the Dubai campus will be free to structure its own fee structure. “The courses won’t be exorbitant, but they won’t be as low as in India either,’’ a source said. Dubai authorities will pay for the infrastructure, salaries and other logistics, like stay and transportation. “We will be able to make an annual profit of Rs 3 to 4 crore, which will all be employed in bettering facilities on the home campus,’’ the source added. Besides, faculty members will have the opportunity to teach abroad and earn in dollars. All this without investing a penny in the Dubai campus, an official said. Pune university faculty members are already developing a one-year foundation course for high school graduates in Dubai to prepare them for the university system.